Taxpayers are on the hook for more than $215,000 for the prime
minister's jaunt to the Bahamas over the Christmas holidays, CBC
reports.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his family were guests of the Aga
Khan on his privately-owned Bell Island and was joined by a number of
staff.

While Parliament originally said the trip cost $127,187, according to
a document the broadcaster obtained through an access to information
request, the total cost was actually $215,398. This includes costs to
cover RCMP, defence staff, Global Affairs Canada and Privy's Council
staff who accompanied the prime minister on the trip.

A year ago, Justin Trudeau was pictured in Hangzhou, China
with Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma, waving around a Clearwater lobster that had
recently been made available for sale on Ma’s e-commerce site T-Mall.

But politics is a fickle mistress. Promoting a growing
Canadian seafood producer in Asia was a top priority when the cameras were
rolling in China, but those ties have been severed now that Clearwater is an
impediment to a project even closer to the prime minister’s heart: Indigenous
reconciliation.

Last Thursday, the Department of Fisheries put out an
innocuous-looking press release that said it will use 25 per cent of the
existing total allowable catch of Arctic surf clams to issue a new license that
will be open to expressions of interest from “Indigenous entities” from the
four Atlantic provinces and Quebec.

Fisheries minister Dominic LeBlanc said that by “enhancing
access” to the surf clam fishery for Indigenous groups, “we are taking a
powerful step toward reconciliation.”

But one group’s “enhanced access” is another’s lost
business.

Clearwater has, to this point, controlled all the quota
available, meaning that its clam business — providing those brilliant red
tongues that look so appealing in sushi — is about to shrink by a quarter.

The Liberal government in Quebec is currently working on a bill that
bans niqabs from the public service. Jagmeet Singh is 100% against it.
However his rivals Niki Ashton and Guy Caron have had more cagey
responses. ...

When I first watched the video, I guessed that Singh’s position on
the ban was actually what this woman was raving about. And, sure enough,
she later posted a video to Facebook confirming this was the case.

This doesn’t make her rude interruption right, and one can certainly take issue with her tone and exaggerated fears.

But it does tell us she had a particular policy dispute with Singh
and wasn’t mistakenly launching an anti-Muslim tirade against him as an
individual, which bursts a large part of the media narrative.

There’s a bigger question, though: The media act like they’re against
any glimmer of intolerance, particularly when it comes to Islam.

So much so that the Conservatives' modest citizenship oath niqab ban
was drummed up as a decisive issue in the push to oust them in the last
election.

Meanwhile, we’ve got a whole subset of NDP members who support a much
broader niqab ban and leadership candidates enabling them. And yet the
liberal media have practically left them all alone.

The coverage around this one heckler incident is a media fail - full of misinformation and double standards.

Nov. 30: Premier Kathleen Wynne meets with NDP MP
Glenn Thibeault, who agrees to run for the provincial Liberals. Wynne
has said she decided at that meeting to appoint him.Dec. 11: Local Liberal and chair of the Sudbury
police services board Gerry Lougheed visits Andrew Olivier, the Liberal
candidate in the June provincial election who was seeking to run again.
Lougheed asks Olivier to consider stepping aside and nominating
Thibeault instead. He tells Olivier "in the course of that deliberation"
to consider "appointments, jobs, whatever."Dec. 11: Wynne phones Olivier, who is
quadriplegic and says he tapes conversations as his way of taking notes.
He said technical difficulties prevent him from recording that
exchange.Dec. 12: Pat Sorbara, Wynne's deputy chief of staff,
phones Olivier and says Wynne is "going to have to make a decision
around the appointment," later telling him they should chat about what
he would be interested in doing, be it "appointments to boards or
commissions," a constituency office job or role in the party executive.Dec. 15: Olivier goes public with claims that
Lougheed and Sorbara offered him a job or appointment to step aside;
Progressive Conservatives ask Ontario Provincial Police to investigate;
New Democrats ask Elections Ontario to investigate.

The
legal team representing Kathleen Wynne is demanding an apology from
Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown over an allegedly
"defamatory" statement about the premier's participation in the Sudbury
byelection scandal trial.

While
speaking to reporters at Queen's Park on Tuesday, Brown was asked by
CBC Toronto's Mike Crawley why he did not specifically ask about the
bribery scandal during question period.

"I
hope that the premier will give us answers, we're not getting them in
the legislature, maybe when she stands trial," Brown responded.

In
a letter addressed to Brown obtained by CBC Toronto, Wynne's lawyer
Jack B. Siegel took issue with Brown's use of the phrase "when she
stands trial."

"Contrary
to your statement, Premier Wynne is not standing trial. Your statement
is false and misleading and appears to have been made with the intention
to harm the reputation of Ms. Wynne," Siegel wrote, adding that Wynne
is not subject to any charges in the trial.

Don’t expect Premier Kathleen Wynne to change course because of
Tuesday’s warning from Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office (FAO)
that her minimum wage hikes will cost 50,000 jobs, hit groups like
recent immigrants hardest and are an inefficient way to address poverty.

Because that’s not how a left-wing ideologue like Wynne operates.

Indeed, her government’s typical reaction to critical, non-partisan
warnings it gets from independent officers of the legislature — such as
the auditor general and the FAO — is to ignore them, or to attack the
messenger.

That’s what Wynne’s Liberal government did when auditor general
Bonnie Lysyk criticized its public pension plan accounting and “smart
meter” program.

A plan to increase the price to park at street meters and in Green P
lots in Toronto is nothing more than a tax grab, Doug Ford says.

Ford,
a former city councillor who has announced that he will run against
Mayor John Tory in next fall’s municipal elections, said he believes
that this is a desperate move by Tory to find revenue anywhere he can.

“He
hasn’t been fiscally responsible whatsoever with the taxpayers money
and he wants to tax everything from parking to rain coming off your
roof.” Ford said Wednesday. “Anything he can get his hands on, he can
tax.”

TPA, which now takes in more than $113 million a year, is
considering a plan to bump up rates roughly a-buck-an-hour at many
street meters; extend the hours when drivers would have to pay for
parking on some streets near downtown Toronto; and increase fees at
Green P lots, particularly at high-demand locations.

“A
comprehensive review of parking rates at all TPA off-street municipal
parking facilities is carried out at least annually to ensure the prices
in place are addressing demand patterns such that TPA is delivering its
core mandate of providing short-stay high, turnover parking,” a
municipal parking report says.

South Korea said Wednesday it had conducted its first live-fire drill
for an advanced air-launched cruise missile that would strengthen its
pre-emptive strike capability against North Korea in the event of
crisis.

South Korea’s military said the Taurus missile fired from an F-15
fighter jet travelled through obstacles at low altitudes before hitting a
target off the country’s western coast during drills Tuesday.

Police say the nun was cutting trees to clear the roadways around
Archbishop Coleman Carrol High School near Miami. Sister Margaret Ann is
the school’s principal, according to its website.

Police say “acts of kindness” like Sister Margaret Ann’s remind
residents that they’re all part of the same community. The department
added in its post, “Thank you Sister and all of our neighbours that are
working together to get through this!”